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July 24, 2011

Obama/Boehner: Where’s the Beer?

By Michael Shaw

Obama Boehner sour

Obama Boehner sour 2

Q: How can Obama be the president you want him to be when he’s facing this Republican Congress?

A: I’ll put it this way, brother: You’ve got to be a thermostat rather than a thermometer. A thermostat shapes the climate of opinion; a thermometer just reflects it. If you’re just going to reflect it and run by the polls, then you’re not going to be a transformative president. Lincoln was a thermostat. Johnson and F.D.R., too.

– Talk Interview with Cornell West, NYT Mag

To the extent Obama has co-opted the GOP agenda to make it look to the voters that he, not the right wing budget slashers, is the flavor of the month, this photo bears out the result.

In Washington right now, the problem has been that there hasn’t been enough difference between the two sides to generate true creative tension or to force real horse trading with either the attendant poker faces or the more kinetic and animated looks that come with true leverage and real tactics to employ.

So what we’re left with is these two similar and phenomenally sorry photos from Saturday morning, an embarrassment to the American people for offering us not much more than haplessness and spit.

On the left, the most sour-looking Boehner could be mistaken for the poster boy for “the party of no.” But then, Boehner, who really wants a deal, seems as much disgusted for being forced to show up for the token hour, and the photo-op, when the latest deal exploded in acrimony the day before.

Obama, on the other hand, offers up the most sanctimonious look, the “High School play” version of “what do I have to do?” broadcasting how much he’s ready-and-willing — sitting there with his pen and pad — to give these guys most of what they’ve asked for.

(photo 1: Kristoffer Tripplaar-Pool/Getty Images. caption: U.S. President Barack Obama (R) meets with Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-OH) (L) in the Cabinet Room of the White House. Yesterday Boehner left debt negotiation talks with the Obama Administration, but accepted an invitation to meet with Obama, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-AZ) and House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-MD) today.)

(photo 2: AFP Photo/Jewel Samad.)

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  • black dog barking

    Looks like they’ve entered into the “who ever speaks first, loses” phase of the negotiations. Silence from politicians, music to my ears.

  • black dog barking

    Looks like they’ve entered into the “who ever speaks first, loses” phase of the negotiations. Silence from politicians, music to my ears.

  • Lucaites

    How come Boehner doesn’t have a flag pin on his lapel?  Is he un-American?

  • bks

    Neither of them could care less about the USA.

        –bks

  • Pingback: Poker News » Debt Poker — With a Cut Deck – Huffington Post

  • Gasho

    Here’s how this kind of shot comes about..

    Corporations become overly powerful and start buying the media;
    the media starts promoting agendas instead of uncovering news;
    the “tea partiers” influence politics through irrational arguments that get covered and promoted by the biased media;
    the country becomes polarized and dysfuntional;
    the president tries to find a middle ground between governing and appeasing the loons;
    no viable solutions can be created that appeal to reasonable people, the loons, and reality itself and there is a total breakdown…  and here’s the photo!!

  • tinwoman

    Boehner looks miserable and put upon.  He looks dog tired, and I don’t think it’s just because he hasn’t had his customary five Bloody Marys for breakfast.  Obama looks fresh and in control, and is even smiling slightly.  It makes me wonder what is really going on in those talks.

    • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_MTIPO5QKCXPJNWLQIAUAXRMX2U JOHN

      Oh, I’m not so sure.  My guess is that if someone dropped two fingers of Jamison’s in his coffee cup, old John would perk up fairly fast.

  • Boxcar

    Glum and Glummer

    • jonst

      In their standard uniforms…..blue blazers, and blue shirts. Well, at least Obama’s is not a button down collar. Then again, he has on the monkey-shit brown pants with it. This, in late July, in DC. Can’t somebody EVER wear a linen suit, or something like it? Always like their Mommies dressed them out of a LL Bean catalog.

  • JadedOptimist

    What strikes me is how alike they look.  Despite all the rhetoric about the huge gap between the President and Congressional Republicans, here are two men dressed virtually identically, with very similar glum expressions. Even their skin tone, due to Obama’s mixed heritage and Boehner’s penchant for tanning, looks the same in this picture. The picture masks, rather than reveals, the differences.

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